


Books and Plans

by realjane



Series: Relentless (Hogwarts Era series) [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anniversary, F/M, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:48:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28996227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realjane/pseuds/realjane
Summary: Hermione and Draco have graduated from Hogwarts, but she's not so sure what's in store for them. Draco, on the other hand, has very specific ideas. A book store date, the romance of snow, and the spontaneity of making plans.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Series: Relentless (Hogwarts Era series) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081031
Comments: 28
Kudos: 117





	Books and Plans

**Author's Note:**

> Part 9 of my Relentless series! Enjoy. *This is my 40th story on Ao3! The imagery for this piece was inspired by @dragonanddirewolf on tumblr, and her incredible version of 'Hermione in her boyfriend's coat': https://dragonanddirewolf.tumblr.com/post/641032787978240000/my-very-first-attempt-at-hermione-granger
> 
> Also inspired by a prompt sent to me by Alice <3

He trailed after her busy brown hair, which was piled on top of her head into a clump. It bobbed as she popped her hips. She wasn’t annoyed with him… that he was aware of... but she had been oddly quiet the whole day. Usually she wouldn’t shut up, and he loved that about her. It didn’t give him time to get lost in his own thoughts. His brain was still a dangerous place. Hermione often chattered away about any number of things, and doubled-down on it when she sensed he was drowning in ennui, asking his opinion but never quite giving him a moment to answer--except today, when she was bereft of little opinions _. _

Through Zonko’s. Through Durvish and Bange’s. Through Scrivenshaft’s, where she had the gall to ask the owner to explain the difference between split-nub quills and single-pot, even after he insisted she didn’t want split-nub, that they break so much easier, that with the way she scribbles as if the quill is going to  _ disapparate. _ She just nodded, not looking at him, and purchased the split-nub anyhow. 

Books and Tomes was where his anxiety hit a fever-pitch. She barely glanced around the veritable museum to her primal joys. She was ‘browsing.’ Hermione didn’t  _ browse _ book shops. She devoured them. Something was wrong. Her fingertips paused over a blue leather book with worn corners. She glanced back at him.

Her eyes were full of unspent tears. 

Before she could take one more step, he tugged on her elbow. Both Hermione and the blue book came to his chest, and her sweet little face found his shoulder. His heart lurched. Her breath caught. 

“What’s gotten into you?” he whispered. A man attempted to sidle down the aisle behind them and Draco repelled him with a pointed glare. He sat on a pile of books. Were Hermione in her right mind, she would’ve admonished him for doing so, but she just covered her face and sobbed quietly. He pried the blue book which had set off the water-works from her death grip.  _ Fundamentals of Potions by Albert Strauss-Findley.  _ Ah. Draco slipped his hands beneath her light jacket and hugged her close. 

She had been distinctly quiet (since he had applied for Potions apprenticeships) about  _ what comes next. _ Hermione planned things in her sleep, she looked to the future like challenges to organize, but whenever the subject of ‘what do we do now that we’ve graduated?’ came up, she just… didn’t want to make plans. Every time he brought up her own applications, she insisted it wasn’t the right time to apply for a healing internship, that it was too expensive to attend a Muggle university, that she was too busy helping Potter with research for his cases. All possibilities were binned. She was still renting her flat on a month-to-month basis. She went to the market  _ daily _ just so she didn’t have to waste refrigerator space. Fear had never taken a sweeter form than his little Gryffindor. He knew she didn’t want to pressure him or influence his choice of apprenticeships, but also refused to talk about what was next for  _ them. _

Draco wasn’t satisfied. That witch was the  _ brightest  _ of hers or any age. Like any good concerned boyfriend, he had spent the last few weeks writing inquiries. He fully intended to give her a long list of potential programs which were worthy of her at dinner, as a surprise. He wasn’t sure they’d make it if she didn’t stop crying.

She sniffled into his neck. 

“Darling, I won’t have it. This is supposed to be a happy day!” Draco rubbed her back. “Whatever it is will pass.”

“I know,” she sniffled. “I’m sorry. We’re celebrating. I’m just--”

“Let’s cheer you up.”

“How…?”

“Pick out five books. Anything you want.”

Hermione pulled back and blinked.  _ “Five?” _

“You can talk me into ten, but no more.” He brushed her chin. “Uh-uh. No protestations, I won’t hear them. Go on. Then we’re going to kick this foul mood. Alright?”

The wrinkle between her eyebrows smoothed away. She nodded. “I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy of--”

“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to influence your decisions.” He grinned and kissed her cheek. Hermione sighed. Her pupils danced from side to side, taking in his gaze with a hunger she saved just for him. She scrubbed the tearful trails from her cheeks. Her eyebrow crept upwards.

“Anything? You’re serious.”

“Any. But this one--” he held up the blue book-- “is mine, so.”

A flush crept up her cheeks and she whirled around. Both hands raised, miming whatever decision she was making in her head--fiction or nonfiction? Spellwork or theory? Vintage or new works? She set her shoulders and strode for the next aisle. Draco watched her skirt flip, revealing an expanse of knit-clad legs, and disappear. He sighed.

_ One year. _

Three-hundred and sixty-five days of the witch who smelled like purple flowers--every day memorizing the things about her nobody else was privy to. Dreaming about a life with her. Making her cry on accident--making her laugh on purpose. Pissing her off.  _ Making her come.  _ That one was new. He never tried to be with her intimately while they were still students. For one thing, the Room of Requirement was so far from their respective common rooms as to be an  _ obvious _ choice for a tryst, and also it was drafty, and  _ also _ Draco had a very keen fear that being intimate with him would change her mind. He didn’t care when she cried, because she reached for him in comfort every time, but the day she had reached for him with a devotion deeper than skin and mapped in goosebumps, he had been taught how to touch and be touched with a sweetness which made him misty-eyed. She protected his skin with her lips and breath. Hermione asked for what she wanted. All he ever wanted to do, until they shuffled off the mortal coil, was give her an ounce of safety back. They had navigated the first steps of a deeper intimacy from his bed in the Malfoy family flat in London, which he would soon be required to vacate. He didn’t mind. He wanted her to put her touches on his future home, even if it meant  _ tchotchkes. _ Draco dreamed of shelves full of figurines, which served no purpose at all.

It didn’t take a full year to realize how much she mattered. The length of a kiss in a deserted street a year ago was enough. 

_The day she went from The Swot_ _to MY swot,_ he thought, smiling down at his hands, which cradled the potions book she had clearly plucked from the shelf with him in mind. 

He had pondered gifts for her in the past, but his ideas had fallen flat. Giving her free reign of his family’s account wasn’t altruistic in the least; he would be cut off from the family vaults at the stroke of midnight on January the first, and he was inclined to make Lucius Malfoy feel even a fraction of the hurt he had caused. He fully intended to have the itemized invoice owled to his father. He had already set aside twelve copies of  _ House Elf Liberation  _ by Marina Sandringham, in which he would forge his father’s signature and a personal note, and donate them in their entirety to the most verbal supporters of ‘Dobby’s Law’, Potter’s very first successful bit of legislation since being elected to the Wizengamot. Because when one tells one’s father to  _ rot in hell, _ one really ought to say it with one’s whole chest.

That he would still be receiving a small, secret allowance from his mother was irrelevant. 

Draco waited for Hermione at the counter, and when she came up with an armful of books which numbered a handful more than ten, and flushed cheeks, he heaped a few extra tomes on top. He charged the books to the Malfoy account, and requested the receipt in triplicate. The purchase was shipped via floo to a location Draco passed on a small piece of paper. Hermione was banished to the street in front of the shop so she’d stop pestering him about it, with his coat for good measure--the temperature had dropped a good ten degrees since the snow began falling, and that girl was made of springtime. Her thin anorak wasn’t enough. Winter never did agree with her skin. Plus, she took a lot of joy out of swimming in his jacket.

He took one book under his arm. Something special. He bid the cashier a good night.

Through the window in the front door of the shop, he watched her for a moment. Beneath the street light, his sweet Hermione shook her hair out of the top knot, threading her fingers through her curls so the tresses fluttered down her back. She sighed and her shoulders pulled forward. Her white jumper glowed in the golden lamplight, as did every snowflake which found purchase in her hair. One lone curl circled her cheekbone. She was lost, vision trained on an empty blanket of white. 

The bell tinkled to signal his exit from the shop and she glanced up. She had peachy cheeks from the cold. Black wool hung from her shoulders like a cape. Sadness pulled at the corners of her eyes, but she truly was the most radiant woman he had ever seen. 

From the coal-grey sky, a thought struck him deep, lodged between his ribs, and bloomed:  _ I can’t wait to marry her. _ It stole his breath. He clutched his chest. She frowned and hurried to his elbow.

“You alright?” 

"Mm. Fine, fine."

She pulled him towards a bench beneath the streetlight and they sat together. He watched her lips form words which his ears couldn’t comprehend, so he met them with his, right there on the street corner, where several people passed by in the pre-supper hustle. What they saw was a blond man kissing a brunette woman like he’d been the sole passenger on a stranded submarine for six months, but what he felt was a tremendous sense of the tides  _ shifting. _ He wanted to drag her along with him--not under, not so she drowned in expectations. Shared goals. Fortunes which weren’t measured in coin.

She kissed his cheek, his jaw, and sat back as far as he would allow; his hands were curled in the coat’s lapel. Her eyes were still glassy.

“What’s wrong, love?” Asking her first meant she wouldn’t badger him about suddenly being dumb-struck by the idea that he might  _ actually  _ ask her to hitch her cart to his for the long-haul (and not the M-word, oh  _ gods, _ just thinking about the word again made him want to pass out).

“I’m… I’m fine,” she managed. “Just been thinking.”

“What about?”

“You.”

Draco snorted. “What have I done to provoke such a thing?”

“You have worked so hard... for the chance of a career, and I know I have been insufferable forcing you to study for entrance exams--”

“Putting it mildly.” She smacked his shoulder and he chuckled.

“And I just… whichever apprenticeship you accept, I’m so proud of you.” Her voice broke on the last few words. “Please promise me you won’t hold yourself back. For me.”

Draco sighed. His chest hurt. 

“Hermione Granger.” He shook his head. “You have terrifically awful timing. It would be impressive if it wasn’t so infuriating.” Draco held out the sole book he had kept from their stash. “I have a bone to pick with you, if I may.”

“Draco--is this--”

“It’s not a first edition--” (it  _ was, _ of a Miranda Goshawk title, no less) “--I know you wouldn’t take it if it were, and I also know you’ll want to actually read it, so it’s not sensible. It’s still older than you by a fair amount.”

“It’s too much!” She fanned open the pages and the illustrated title card of  _ The Wilds in Me _ drew her attention. The novel was about a woman whose magic was base and untethered, and the more she gave in to it’s seduction, the more powerful she became. Draco had read one chapter on a prior visit to the shop and lost five years off his life within the deep purple language, but he knew she’d eat it up.

“Do you like it?”

She nodded. Her kiss of thanks lingered. “You’re just… a dream.” She grazed his cheek. She couldn’t voice more. 

Draco smiled. “This is  _ not  _ what  _ I _ dreamed about at all. No--” he kissed her silent. “That’s not a slight to you. I just didn’t think I’d survive long enough to have someone. Or that there would be any single person alive willing to put up with  _ all this _ . Who knew  _ you’d  _ be the one?” He said it with a nuance of Slytherin smarm. She elbowed him.

“How dare you!”

He kissed her nose. “Better?”

“Can we just… sit here. For a while?” 

He nodded. Hermione leaned against him. They’d miss their reservation. It wasn’t so important. Not with snowflakes the size of galleons hanging in the air. Not with a sweet worrying woman tucked into his side.

He needed to drown out her fears. Especially on their anniversary.

The words started tumbling out of him. Softly. Sort of stream-of-consciousness. 

“This is the spot,” he murmured, “THE SPOT--where my world cracked open one year ago. You changed the trajectory of my entire life, you saved me, you  _ warmed me. _ I will never forget this day. If I get old and start feeling like my mind is going, I’ll buy twenty calendars and write down this day so I never forget it. You deserve a stack of books to the moon. 

“I lose a lot of sleep planning out things we could do… we don’t live in the same castle anymore, it requires effort to spend time together, and even though I couldn’t be happier just wiling away a Sunday on my sofa listening to you reenact every voice in Beedle the Bard, there are more… things. For us to do. Some together, some individually.”

“What… what are you talking about?” She pulled the jacked closed around her neck and shivered. Draco pushed up his sleeves. He was radiating with nervous warmth.

“I know you’ve been avoiding making any sort of plans.” He pried his coat from her grip and reached for the inside pocket, proffering a folded scrap of paper beneath her nose. Once she took it, his hand remained under the wool coat, because he desperately needed to feel the way her torso imbued the garment with comfort. Draco memorized the cables of her jumper. She opened his note. Her eyes bugged.

“What have you done?”

“That,” he said, nodding, “is a list of schools interested in training new healers. All of them would require apparition or portkey, but it’s not unheard of.  _ And _ if you flip the paper over,  _ that _ is a list of people who have written a personal letter of recommendation in your favor, which I have gathered in a file. Notice Minerva McGonagall wrote  _ two. _ And this--” he felt in his trouser pocket for the slim metal-- “is a key. To a flat, for which the rent has already been paid for the year. It’s down the street from a family market, they stock pomegranates all year ‘round (I checked), and there’s a pub which specializes in martinis two doors down, and they allow feline residents. And also, I will live there. I have recently come to terms with the idea of another kitten in my life other than  _ you. _ Plus… I know you love my bed--”

“Mmmm. I do.” She smiled bashfully.

He rubbed her thigh. “Then… what if it was yours, too?”

Hermione’s jaw opened and shut several times before she settled on a pained frown. “This is too much, Draco.” 

“Is it? Love… these are all gifts you can give to  _ yourself, _ but you have to know you deserve them all.”

“What if you get sick of me? I’ll put a wrench in your plans.” 

Draco pressed the key into her palm and folded her fingers around it. “Darling, I… you gave me back to myself.  _ You _ are my plans. But…” Draco reached for the envelope in his back pocket, the final piece of his news for the love of his gods-forsaken life. He held it up but snatched it back before she could touch it.

“This is an offer for a program, which I have accepted. I will commute via floo.”

“You have?” She worried her bottom lip. 

“This morning.”

“Where--with whom will you be apprenticing?”

Draco let the envelope fall into her outstretched hand. The signature on the offer letter had him reeling when he had received it a few days prior. “See for yourself.”

Pure astonishment filled her face. “Nicholas Flamel?” she breathed. He nodded once. “Oh my gods. Draco!” Hermione wound her arms around his neck.

“Oof!” Draco laughed. “What do you say? I’m several steps ahead, you’ll have to catch up--mmph!” She kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, again. 

“I did… I did wonder if all things would end, once we graduated,” she whispered. 

“You didn’t even ask me.”

“I know, but I’ve sort of… run out of utility.”

“Excuse me for contradicting you, but you’re not a ruddy cauldron.” Draco nosed her cheek. Hermione took solace against his side and they remained quiet for a while, both staring out at the new blanket of show, which filled every purposeful footprint. “I won’t let this end, Hermione. I’d like this conversation to be ongoing,” he said softly. “Pick this up same time next year?”

She beamed at him with tears and smiles in equal measure. He coaxed her to the Three Broomsticks (after a violent shiver on his part) and into a corner booth. Her first-edition Miranda Goshawk took precedence beside her plate. When they had toasted to one year of choosing one another every day, and eaten their fill of pub food, Hermione started to warm up to the idea of plans.

She’d apply to every program on his list, to field potential offers right away. Whatever program she heard back from first  _ which offered her a paid position  _ would go to the top of the list. No offers would be accepted in haste. If no offers came, she would seek a second course.

Draco was allowed to pay for however many books he deemed appropriate for her happiness, as long as he didn’t neglect himself in the process. If his potions books didn’t rival her spellwork theory, she’d show him!

They’d use  _ his _ furniture, except her rolltop desk.

They’d get a kitten.

They’d start a potions business for healing magical maladies.

They’d wear matching monochromatic outfits and grace the pages of Witch Weekly.

Draco could grow a beard.

Her ideas came out of her mouth like she intended to manifest such silly projections, but that was the thing: Hermione Granger could do anything she set her wand to. Her  _ mind _ would obliterate any obstacle, as long as she kept it level.

And someday, when they both had careers, and when she made peace with the unknown, he’d ask her to marry him, on that bench in Hogsmeade, outside Books and Tomes, and if he took care of her… she might say yes.

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all. I am tired, I am still recovering from Covid, but I just slogged through writing this piece. At a certain point, I think we have to let go of the idea of being perfect and just share. If you enjoyed it, your words would be super appreciated. Fighting off some hard things at the moment. I really appreciate you reading!


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